Thoughts on: The Verve--Forth
Jamming. Ask any stoner worth his salt, and he'll tell you that if only more bands knew how to jam, how to groove, the music world would be a much more interesting place. The only problem is, jamming is shit. Rock songs written by a group of people tend to meander, looking here and there for a tune until they go into the inevitable fade out. There's a reason why in the entire Rolling Stones back catalog, something like one song is credited to the entire band. At their best though, The Verve successfully evaded this pitfall. Their early drug-inspired output grooved about as much as four pasty gentlemen from Wigan could ever hope to, be it the ethereal rhythm of "Man Called Sun" or the incendiary guitar attack showcased on the live version of "Gravity Grave".
When the band had one of their many falling-outs, frontman Richard Ashcroft went off to write a solo album. Realizing that he was boring bastard on his own (a realization he would soon repress), he brought the band back in to finish 1997's Urban Hymns. The group put a distinct touch on what would could have easily been boring singer songwriter fare like "Lucky Man" and "The Drugs Don't Work". On the other end of the spectrum, the ferocious "Rolling People", seemingly born out of a group jam, was direct and catchy like so few songs of that nature are. However, being unable to reconcile Ashcroft's ambitions of fame and guitarist Nick McCabe's ambitions of musical purity, the group disbanded (again).
But surely any group that had scaled such heady musical heights could easily do it again? Surely Ashcroft's three solo albums, all of which represented the aural equivalent of a coffee table book, had not dulled the band's potential for brilliance?
The verdict is probably not as positive as the band would like. Opening track "Sit and Wonder", to paraphrase Peter Hook, sounds like it was mixed by the drummer's dad. While it's not unlike Ashcroft's successful collaboration with DJ Shadow on 1998's "Lonely Soul", here everything sounds forced. I don't think anybody was sitting waiting for this record thinking, "You know, what indie music needs right now is more trip-hop beats." Likewise, lead-off single "Love is Noise", with its dance affectations and tapestry of Ashcroft vocal samples, might have sounded revolutionary had it been released a decade ago. Richard channels Liam Gallagher in the chorus, and McCabe contributes some fantastic guitar lines throughout, but none of these virtues can quite compensate for the fact that it all seems at odds with what's happening in music today.
There are some good moments here. "Judas" mixes the atmospherics of "A Storm in Heaven" and the disaffected yuppie themes of Ashcroft's solo career. I probably shouldn't like it, but I do. Closer "Appalachian Springs" has the sort of lyrical gambit used by Noel on "The Masterplan": "Took a step to the left, took a step to the right". It the sort of line that feels powerful in the context of the song, even if it probably means nothing.
The rest of the record falls into jam mode ("Noise Epic") or Richard solo mode with lusher instrumentation ("Rather Be"). For the most part, it's perfectly passable and listenable. But that's not the issue. The Verve, even in the more sanguine portions of "Urban Hymns", never played it safe. Forth should have come out in 2000. Instead it's coming out in 2008. And as ideas that might once have been fresh and exciting now fall flat, and the nostalgia for the Britrock era fades away, all we're left with is another once great band lining up shamelessly at the reunion trough.
Rating: 4 out of 10
Listen/Download:
"Appalachian Springs"
Myspace
Wiki
On Amazon MP3
posted by Mike at 2:00 AM
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